“The pain is so fresh – and yet I didn’t even know him. Or did I? Avi, if there’s one thing I learned from you, it’s how to be a best friend to everyone. How to love people with your whole heart.“

By a friend 

R’ Avi Piamenta…

The pain is so fresh, the hurt so personal – and yet I didn’t even know him. Or did I?

I’ve been reading the posts on social media, watching the clips going around, and somehow, like so many others, I feel like I lost a close friend. 

If there’s one thing I can say about Avi, it’s that he was everyone’s best friend. And if I had to choose just two words to describe him, it would be: Ahavas Yisroel. Avi truly loved every Jew he met – deeply, sincerely, and there was absolutely no exception.

He greeted everyone with a huge smile, listened with real interest, and made them feel like a million bucks.

For Avi, the quote in Hayom Yom – “A neshama comes down to this world for seventy or eighty years just to do a favor for another Jew” – wasn’t a saying. It was how he lived every single day. It didn’t matter if he was talking to a celebrity, a child, a stranger, or someone a little “out there” – he loved them all, and they loved him right back. And for many of them, that love changed their lives.

One person wrote recently about meeting Avi as a young boy with a dream of writing songs. Nervously, he shared his handwritten lyrics.

“As I was talking to him, I started regretting it,” he wrote.

“What am I bothering him for… he probably gets people coming up to him with songs like this every day…”

But Avi looked at him with a huge smile, read the lyrics, listened to him sing the chorus — and gave full, genuine praise.

“The song got tucked away in a drawer and forgotten. But the warm feeling stayed with me..” 

Because Avi didn’t just bring joy from a stage or with a flute. He brought it with his presence.

Another person who davened near him in shul shared:

“There wasn’t a single time – not once – that I bumped into Avi in shul or on the street and he didn’t greet me warmly, ask how I’m doing, how I’m feeling. And it was clear it came from real love and genuine care.”

And he added: Hashem always takes the best…

Others wrote about how, in the hardest times of their lives, they knew they could call Avi – and he’d be there. Whether it was for a late-night walk in Yafo or a spontaneous trip to nowhere in particular, just to bring some light. Or the father whose son got caught up in the wrong crowd – Avi, who barely knew them, put himself at risk and went to Manhattan one dark night to bring that boy back.

And then there are the videos – where mid-performance, Avi would stop everything just to spotlight one person playing alongside him. Or to single someone out in the crowd and applaud them, changing their entire day – or maybe their life.

Avi, if there’s one thing I learned from you, it’s how to be a best friend to everyone. How to love people with your whole heart.

Avi, I never really knew you – but somehow, you were my best friend. And I already miss you.

Please… take your smile, your warmth, your fire — and smash down the walls of this Golus. Bring Moshiach.

We need it. We need you.

VIDEO